Baby Plays Around: A Love Affair, with Music. Her essays have appeared in several anthologies, most recently, Drinking Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up. Stapinski has also written extensively for The New York Times, for Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Salon, Real Simple, New York magazine and dozens of other newspapers, magazines and blogs. She’s been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, The Today Show and as a performer with The Moth main stage.Stapinski's new book is Murder In Matera: A True Story of Passion, Family, and Forgiveness in Southern Italy.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
I'm about a quarter of the way through The Sellout by Paul Beatty, a social satire about an African American man's unorthodox upbringing and his appeal before the Supreme Court after his attempt to reintroduce slavery to a Los Angeles neighborhood.Visit Helene Stapinski's website.
The book is simultaneously incredibly sad and laugh out loud funny, no easy feat. I have a problem with self-serious, pretentious writers who are afraid --or maybe are just incapable -- of making people laugh. You can tell a moving story and still manage to entertain your reader. Beatty, so far, has managed to tell a painful, contemporary tale, while using wicked, biting humor. His social commentary and riffs come so fast and furiously that I can only read a chapter at a time. It makes my head spin. But in a good way. My first book was described as "heartbreaking and hilarious," which is what I'm usually going for in my own writing. So I'm loving The Sellout.
--Marshal Zeringue
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